Private spaceflight company to further study south Texas launch site

The city of Houston and many members of Texas’ congressional delegation, including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, have expressed concerns about the encroachment of commercial space on NASA’s budget for human spaceflight activities.

Their belief is that money invested in private spaceflight companies will take away from the space agency’s budget to build its own rocket and space capsule, and that in turn money taken away from those activities will ultimately hurt Johnson Space Center.

One wonders how their views might change if the private company SpaceX, which is building its own rocket (Falcon) and capsule (Dragon), moves forward with plans to build a launch site in South Texas.

Today the space company filed its intent to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (see .pdf) for the proposed launch site in Cameron County approximately 3 miles north of the Mexican border on the Gulf Coast. It is about 5 miles south of Port Isabel and South Padre Island.

Facilities at the vertical launch site would include a hangar, a launch pad and stand with its associated flame duct, propellant storage and handling areas, a workshop and office area, and a warehouse for parts storage.

According to the company, the site’s operations would consist of up to 12 launches per year with a maximum of two Falcon Heavy launches. All Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches would be expected to have commercial payloads, including satellites or experimental payloads.

In addition to standard payloads, the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy may also carry the Dragon capsule.

The crafts would launch to the east, over the Gulf of Mexico.

There are things the state of Texas can do to help bring this about. A group called the Texas Space Alliance has been lobbying for legislation that would support commercial space in the state, seeking zero liability for passengers who choose to fly, and tax breaks for spaceports.

“I think this is fantastic and as you know have been calling for it for a while,” the group’s president and founder, Rick Tumlinson, told me of SpaceX’s plans. “We are putting together a macro legislative agenda for the next session to enable this and much more. It is up to Texas to make this happen or blow it.”

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“The city of Houston and many of Texas’ congressional delegation, including Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, have expressed concerns about the encroachment of commercial space of NASA’s budget for human spaceflight activities.

Their belief is that money invested in private spaceflight companies will take away from the space agency’s budget to build its own rocket and space capsule, and that in turn money taken away from those activities will ultimately hurt Johnson Space Center.”

What a bunch of hypocritical rhetoric. These are the SAME people who have shashed NASA’s budget to the quick. And NOW they have the unmitigated gall to express concerns about NASA? Give me a break. Just get out of the way of business and let the private sector do what it does best, INNOVATE, CREATE and MARKET! Something the US government nolonger is willing or able to do!

Wouldn’t it only be couple of hundred miles closer to the equator? Would the boost in speed translate to significant cost savings? If not, I could see many benefits to having the site closer to Houston. May just be that they think the legislative process will be easier if they are “away” from densely populated areas.

The problem with using Hawai’i as a launch base is that it is so far from the mainland that it raises transportation costs far more than the added boost would justify. But if we ever do build a space elevator, Hawai’i would be a great place to site it!

True. Probably the biggest problem with Hawaii is the cost of shipping heavy hardware that distance. Otherwise, a launch facility on the SE coast of the big island could be used for both equatorial and polar orbits.

Hawaii is probably too far away to economically transport things like rocket parts, raw materials, etc, for what amounts to an approximately 10 degree gain in latitude. I suspect it’s cheaper to build the rocket parts here in the continental US, then ship the pieces by rail or truck to the launch site for integration.

JohnD–Not so much aggrieved as exhasperated. But since you apparently skipped out on all the classes where they taught U.S. History and Newtonian Mechanics, here are some links for your remedial education:

From the 1991 text of the official NASA Kennedy Space Center History:

“As the range and sophistication of the V-2 and follow-on rocket systems increased, it became evident that a new, long-range test site was needed. In October 1949, President Harry S. Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Grounds at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

“The Cape was ideal for testing missiles. Virtually undeveloped, it enabled personnel to inspect, fuel and launch missiles without danger to nearby communities. The area’s climate also permitted year-round operations, and rockets could be launched over water instead of populated areas”

“Although a missile range had been in operation at White Sands, New Mexico since the close of World War II, this range was only 135 miles long and was perilously close to populated areas. It proved to be too short for newer, more powerful missiles and too risky to support more advanced research and development tests.

“The dangers of a missile range so close to populated areas would become painfully clear in May, 1947 when a V-2 rocket strayed to the south instead of heading north over the White Sands range. The missile flew directly over El Paso, Texas and eventually crashed into the Tepeyac Cemetery in Juarez, Mexico.

“The missile impact created a hole 50 feet wide by 30 feet deep. Although no one was injured, the U.S. government caused a minor international incident and had to settle damage claims, many of which were obviously embellished by the local residents. Thankfully, the quest for a new missile range had begun almost a year before this incident.

“In October, 1946 the Joint Research and Development Board under the Joint Chiefs of Staff established the Committee on the Long Range Proving Ground to analyze possible locations for a new missile range to be shared by the various branches of the military.”

Wait, wait, all those hard words!…you’ll want pictures. Alright: now remember how White Sands was only 135 miles long? Here’s a graphic of the proposed trajectory for Vanguard, America’s first attempt at launching a satellite:

Note the impact point of the first stage: 230 miles downrange. Note the impact point of the second stage: 1400 miles downrange.

Note that every point under the flight path out to 1400 miles is at risk of falling debris in case of an accident.

Do you get it now? Bigger boosters need bigger ranges. The only way you’ll get a range big enough for large ballistic launches is by putting your launch pad next to (or out in the middle of) the sea.

I don’t expect facts to change your mind: your argument isn’t really about physics or history so much as it is about your personal philosophy and the horses you’ve decided to back in the political races of the day. In short, you are arguing exactly like a creationist, global warming denier or anti-vaxxer. and you will not be swayed reason or facts.

Which I should have known is exactly how you would behave, from what I’ve learned of anthropology. Oh well, sometimes we just *have* to defy the forces of nature…

Why fight this to try to protect NASA? One of the great benefits of the space agency is that their research and development brings technology to the commercial markets. Why should launches be different? The fact that the technology has matured to the point that a private company can feasibly take over some of those functions should be celebrated, not bemoaned. NASA can continue focusing on cutting edge, pure science and allow the commercial market to take over the mature technological functions as they are able. This is just as it should be.

I would sooner welcome a we-have-arrived attitude than one of wringing hands over what it might mean for the bureaucracy’s funding.

Sen. Kay Baily Hutchison and other Law makers feel that money invested in private space ventures will ultimately hurt Johnson Space Center. This could be further from the truth. The ultimate goal of Man Space Flight and
its funding can only flurish with the investments from private enterprise. NASA or Johnson Space Center will continue to be the bench mark of excellence and a guide post for Private Space Flight. Simply put, “Its
time has come.”

One wonders how their views might change if the private company SpaceX, which is building its own rocket (Falcon) and capsule (Dragon), moves forward with plans to build a launch site in South Texas.

I think that the phrase “legislative whiplash” covers it. Hutchinson and her cronies have already demonstrated that they don’t care about NASA; they only care about the pork.

Personally, I think that it is terrific that Texas may become the site for manned launches via the Falcon 9 Heavy and Dragon capsule. But we could still lose this to New Mexico, which has an operational launch facility and laws favorable to rocket companies. So let’s all keep the pressure up on Hutchinson and the others (both federal and state) to make this happen!

New Mexico has a “spaceport” that will provide millionaire tourists a few minutes of suborbital free-fall on winged flyback boosters. That’s not commercial space. That’s high-altitude dilettantism. And they may keep it.

So, no, I don’t think we’re in danger of losing this to New Mexico. Florida yes, so I still think it’s a good idea to make sure our elected officials keep Texas in the running.

PDQPete – are you seriously thinking that they cannot scale up the operations?

While you are being dismissive, they are making the future happen. How many orbital flights have been launched from Texas? What indemnity protection do rocket companies have in Texas? What incentives has Texas offered to new rocket companies? New Mexico and Florida have already answered those questions and lead the race. Puerto Rico is close behind.

If we let any of them get too far ahead, then we could easily lose this opportunity.

Yes John D, I am seriously saying that they cannot upscale their operations in New Mexico.

Why am I saying that? Because back in the 1950’s, when the area was much more sparsely poulated, the U.S. government realized that if *it* wanted to upgrade its operations from sounding flights to actual orbital launches, it would have to relocate to seacoast territory.

Rockets big enough to put human beings, and enough hardware to maintain human beings, into orbit, have to be bigger and they have to burn longer. Small rockets–like the example you cited– can stage within the bounds of a fairly limited test area (such as White Sands). Larger rockets (like Dragon, Falcon, Gryffindor, whatever they’re calling it–or like Redstone, Atlas, Gemini, Apollo) need the much larger areas of open ocean for their staging–and for debris if something gets out of hand.

Even the U.S. Government recognized the necessity of launching bigger rockets over open ocean. Unlike the U.S. government, SpaceX can be sued without its consent. We have a good chance of losing the Falcon launch site to Florida, but a historically proven zero chance of losing it to an inshore location.

John, I understand you’re a pretty smart statistician who did something lucrative for the oil companies for many years (you’ve told us that yourself). I on the other hand have worked in space operations at JSC and KSC (TDY), sat in on too damn many meeting where they discussed the chances of injury due to flight termination of the X-37 at Dryden, and worked on multiple long-range tests at Vandenberg and Barking Sands.

So, yes, I’m being dismissive. Your knowledge of space operations is that of a fanboy’s. The fact that you can recite all of Han Solo’s dialog from the first trilogy doesn’t mean you know how to program the dykstraflex.

If you truly are as experienced in the space industry as you claim, then you wouldn’t mind pointing to something other than your own aggrieved self to support your claims. Heck, even fanboys know how to provide references…

“As the range and sophistication of the V-2 and follow-on rocket systems increased, it became evident that a new, long-range test site was needed. In October 1949, President Harry S. Truman established the Joint Long Range Proving Grounds at Cape Canaveral, Fla.

“The Cape was ideal for testing missiles. Virtually undeveloped, it enabled personnel to inspect, fuel and launch missiles without danger to nearby communities. The area’s climate also permitted year-round operations, and rockets could be launched over water instead of populated areas”

“Although a missile range had been in operation at White Sands, New Mexico since the close of World War II, this range was only 135 miles long and was perilously close to populated areas. It proved to be too short for newer, more powerful missiles and too risky to support more advanced research and development tests.

“The dangers of a missile range so close to populated areas would become painfully clear in May, 1947 when a V-2 rocket strayed to the south instead of heading north over the White Sands range. The missile flew directly over El Paso, Texas and eventually crashed into the Tepeyac Cemetery in Juarez, Mexico.

“The missile impact created a hole 50 feet wide by 30 feet deep. Although no one was injured, the U.S. government caused a minor international incident and had to settle damage claims, many of which were obviously embellished by the local residents. Thankfully, the quest for a new missile range had begun almost a year before this incident.

“In October, 1946 the Joint Research and Development Board under the Joint Chiefs of Staff established the Committee on the Long Range Proving Ground to analyze possible locations for a new missile range to be shared by the various branches of the military.”

Note the impact point of the first stage: 230 miles downrange. Note the impact point of the second stage: 1400 miles downrange.

Yep, those match what I’ve seen elsewhere.

Do you get it now? Bigger boosters need bigger ranges.

I never disputed that; I merely disputed that your personal authority was a sufficient argument to support your point.

I don’t expect facts to change your mind: your argument isn’t really about physics or history so much as it is about your personal philosophy

Yes, I expect people to be able to back up what they say with facts. It is a personal shortcoming of mine.

and the horses you’ve decided to back in the political races of the day.

Given that the horse I’m backing is Texas, perhaps you should reconsider your remarks.

My point (and there was one) is that even though New Mexico is ill-suited for manned launches, we cannot count them out entirely. They could indeed launch a manned rocket from White Sands into orbit; all it would take is sufficient political pull on the part of New Mexico. Is it really inconceivable that such would happen?

Yes, Florida and Puerto Rico are more viable sites than New Mexico. But “it ain’t over until it is over” as one baseball wag was wont to note. The only way to be sure that this comes to Texas is to keep our eyes on all of the potential contenders so that we can convince SpaceX that Texas is the best possible place for them to launch from.

PDQPete, there is one other way to launch from new Mexico without running into some of the problems that you detail. The way is Stratolaunch, which has ties to both SpaceX and Scaled Composites. Using the airplane stage to eliminate the first stage booster also allows them to launch to orbit from New Mexico while still having the option of dropping used stages into the ocean.

We both overlooked it because right now it is closer to vaporware than flight capability. But it is a possibility that should be kept in mind.

Johnson Space Center is ostensibly focused on space operations. That means our focus should be on completing tasks in space. Reducing the cost of launch operations and support through commercial ventures means that NASA has more of its limited budget dollars to spend on space operations.

Independent assessments have already shown that companies like SpaceX can provide services for a tenth of what it would cost the government to do in-house. Let’s take advantage of that and actually put NASA’s human space flight focus back where it belongs – accomplishing missions of exploration and discovery. Right now, we spend so much getting to orbit that there’s nothing left in the budget.

There should be NO private space launches. The only control is to have the federal Government ( NASA )in charge of everything.
Just wait until one of these private rockets, without control by the Feds, crashes into Florida or somewhere else.

Sure – and let’s ground all of those airplanes flying without someone from the FAA at the stick! And take all of those non-government operated cars off the road, too!

The government has done its job in getting manned spaceflight up and running. But the government is terrible at actually making the rockets run on time and on budget; witness the debacle that was the Space Shuttle, to name just one example. We do need the government to set the rules for manned spaceflight and to ensure that everyone lives by them, just as they do for other forms of transportation. And we need the government to continue investing in the research that is too expensive and too long-term for private industry; things like advanced propulsion and long-duration facilities. But we would be much better served by letting private industry do the rest.

In the long run, it will give us less expensive and more frequent access to space. And that’s a good thing!

JohnD Yes, government safety rules should work. How about sleepy bus drivers, sleepy pilots, non-inspected busses, dangerous autos that should have been recalled years ago.
Space flight is to all-encompassing for the Feds to simply be rule makers. The Feds have to be directly involved.

“Just wait until one of these private rockets, without control by the Feds, crashes into Florida or somewhere else.”

Yeah, wouldn’t it be awful if it blew up on live television, killing seven people in the worst show-and-tell disaster in history? Or worse yet, it could leave a couple hundred miles of debris and charred body parts over, say, East Texas. Or maybe it would be overpressurized with pure oxygen and light up on the launch pad as the astronauts screamed in agony with no firefighters in sight.

Jar, the usual ascent path for launches from far south Texas will pass over the waters between Florida and Cuba, not over Florida itself. Go look at your map or globe.

Also, the federal government very much has authority to impose safety regulations on high energy flying machines originating from anywhere within the United States. The private sector launch companies will not have unlimited license to disregard safety considerations.

I don’t want to ‘protect’ government jobs just because they are in my backyard. I want our Texas politicians to try to lure the private sector here, not out hunting for pork. I’d be relatively protective of NASA regardless of where they were, simply because I have a fondness for space exploration; however, times change, and it’s time for the private sector to take over.

Lou, just like Eric, you bought into the headline. The actual study showed that conservatives don’t trust the scientists, not science. I submitted a comment going through it, but as of my last viewing, it was never posted.

Congrats to the Texas Space alliance, and all others working for commercial space, especially in Texas!

As another poster suggested, NASA should be the proud parent of this fledgling commercial launch industry. It can now use it’s limited funds to push further out, and leave routine low earth orbit tasks to these companies that have been enabled by NASA’s history of success (after teaching them about [especially manned] operations, naturally). JSC can use it’s world class expertise to give American business a new edge in this area. Win-win-win all around.

To the many posters on this blog trying to make space just another partisan football, please note the following.

There is so much that needs to be done in space, and so little money to do it all, even if govt. and commercial companies coordinated perfectly to maximize their investments. So let’s not degenerate into partisanship–it only hurts the final cause of space efforts. We need all sides to pull together. There’s just too much work to do. Space has always worked best when it is bi-partisan (actually, non-partisan).

Just for once, can we call a truce, and all agree that space efforts at the dawning of a new commercial age are just too important to score a few cheap points against the “other side”?

Eric, the issue some have is that the “commercial” space flight companies like SpaceX are getting hundreds of missions of taxpayers’ dollars and require a gauranteed government market for them to even attempt to build the system. This is not “commercial” in any dictionary I have ever seen, but rather a government subsidy without the typical contract review or selection
process.

Under the milestone-based, fixed-price system, SpaceX doesn’t get paid until it delivers. That is their incentive to perform rather than drive up costs as in the cost-plus procurement model. It’s not a subsidy for the government to pay down the development risk of a service it will procure, especially not when independent analysis showed that it would have cost 10 times as much for NASA to do it in-house.

A subsidy is an assistance paid to a business or economic sector. I don’t see a distinction between a developmental subsidy and an operational one. Basically SpaceX can’t get enough money from prospective commercial clients to develop and field their launcher, so they are getting money from the taxpayer with essentially no strings attached.

SpaceX has the largest commercial launch contracts in the history of the industry. Strings are absolutely attached on their work for NASA. That’s the whole point behind the milestones. They don’t get paid unless they deliver. NASA paid a little more down to accelerate the schedule. Under what definition is that a subsidy?

How many of you know that there was a rocket launched from Matagorda Island on September 9, 1982? Space Services Inc. launched their Conestoga 1 from ranch land owned by Toddie Lee Wynne. The property was later acquired by the State of Texas and is now a largely-unused State Park property. I had the honor of meeting Mr. Wynne and he was a true Texas gentleman. Unfortunately, he passed away the morning of the launch and did not live to see his dream (and investment) fly.

Because of the debt they should take away all the money for space flight. There is absolutely no logical reason for space flight when we have a debt of 15.5 trillion dollars. One trillion is a million dollars a day every day for 2739 years and we are 15.5 times that in debt. We borrow nearly 50% of every dollar spent. We are headed for a total melt down and if people think what happened at the end of President Bush’s administration and the beginning of President Obama’s with the sudden downturn and people losing their jobs and homes then they have not seen anything. What is soon ahead will destroy this nation as we know it if we do not stop all unnecessary spending.

Another cut-and-paste screed from Saved. Here’s the standard rebuttal:
Listen up, saved – that’s like telling your kids that they have to drop out of school and go to work in the coal mines because you’ve blown the mortgage money on the lottery. NASA is one of the few federal programs that returns a profit to America. And that profit isn’t just monetary; NASA raises American prestige and advances American industry.

Oh, sure, we could shut down NASA and put the money toward the debt. It would take just 851 years of that to pay off the national debt. Or, we could increase NASA’s funding and give it a real mission that fits within the funding. You know what would happen then? The increase in American technology and the increase in well-educated and highly-sought-after American workers would increase our revenues far beyond what was invested, and allow us to pay of the national debt in less than twenty years.

So that’s the choice. We can pull trash our future in order to pay for our past, or we can invest in our future and pay for our past faster and with less pain. I know which option I’d take.

john I just hope you don’t believe what you wrote since NASA with its space exploration has NEVER made a profit. Are you kidding me?

No, I am applying logic to the situation. NASA has not made a profit, but the products that NASA engendered have literally made trillions of dollars for the USA. The most obvious ones are communications satellites (pioneered by NASA), weather satellites (developed by NASA), joysticks (developed for the Apollo program), and the IC circuit (mass-produced for NASA to use in Apollo). The list of spinoffs continues for pages; I recommend that you peruse it.

And, of course, you miss the most obvious point of my post: killing NASA will do NOTHING to reduce the debt. If we applied all of NASA’s funding to paying off the debt, it would take 851 years to pay off the national debt. And that ignores the fact that the national deficit is much larger than NASA’s budget.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m all in favor of a balanced budget, and have been advocating one for decades. But I don’t make the mistake of thinking that cutting the programs that create our future are the ones that should be first on the block. Let’s get military and entitlement spending under control first, as they account for the vast majority of the deficit and the debt.

Earth to lil ol me: The signatories asked NASA to look at the empirical data. My links show that the skeptics that have looked at the empirical data agree with Hansen. In other words, the signatories are asking for something that has already been done.

I’m not sure about point 3; it may be less expensive to start up a private astronaut training facility or to send the folks over to Baikonur for training. It all depends on if NASA embraces the new spaceport or fights it the way that they did the purchase of Mir.

JohnD,
Paul Hill is in charge of MOD and he is committed to ensuring that organization is as lean and responsive as it needs to be in this new fiscal and political environment. I don’t think he’d let an opportunity like that slip away.

OK, OK, OK,
Private companies will be shooting off their little rockets into Earth orbit from all over the country.
Meanwhile, without a strong NASA,when we look through Hubble, we will see a Chinese colony on the moon and a Russian team on mars. But our heads will feel good in the sand.

You confuse “a strong NASA” with “government only launches”. Given that it costs us three times as much to launch an astronaut on a NASA rocket as opposed to a Russian one and may cost even less to launch on a private rocket, why should we keep spending that money on launches when we could be spending it on missions?

Lets allow private industry to do what it does best (drive prices down) and the government do what it does best (push the frontiers).

Private companies will not be shooting their rockets into orbit “from all over the country.” For safety reasons, the federal government will only allow such launches from locations where the ascent path is mostly over water. And Cape Canaveral and far south Texas are obviously the only two good such locations.

Vandenberg: Right. This is the alternative location that must be used for launching into polar orbits. But I don’t think they’re allowed to launch toward the east, are they?

Pegasus: I had not heard of this.

Spaceport America: I can’t find a New Mexico map showing where it is located, but it sounds unsafe simply because the early part of the ascent is over land. Granted, most of it is very lightly populated land. But will the vehicles be passing over, say, Lubbock, Amarillo, Midland/Odessa, Roswell, Las Cruces, El Paso/Ciudad Juarez (I think that about covers everything)?

I see. Spaceport America is at White Sands. I might have guessed that.

That still just doesn’t seem safe. I’m stuck on this idea that ascents all the way to orbit should be over water, because I still vividly remember old newsreel footage of Vanguard launches going totally haywire. (At the time I saw it, the footage was new, not old.)

That still just doesn’t seem safe. I’m stuck on this idea that ascents all the way to orbit should be over water, because I still vividly remember old newsreel footage of Vanguard launches going totally haywire. (At the time I saw it, the footage was new, not old.)

In principle, it is as safe as launching over water provided that you are careful where you point the thing. For example, the Saturn V first stage dropped off just 58 miles down range; it would continue to rise for a bit and finally plop to ground about 350 miles down range. That would put it near Dallas when gravity finally had its say if it were launched from New Mexico. But a staged rocket to LEO won’t be as large as the Saturn V. It would probably drop bits nearer to Abilene. With proper precautions, it would be reasonably safe (i.e., safer than Houston traffic).

In practice, as PDQPete points out above, the BANANAs would probably try to prevent any launch larger than a Stig. Heck, I’m surprised that they were allowed even that!

I agree that Paul Hill and a pretty impressive number of the folks left at JSC see and sense the change in the air, and where our national budgets are heading. Most people left working for the govt. (or their contractors) no longer think in such parochial terms about govt. playing well with commercial players anymore. Even old-line aero companies seem to have gotten the message.

I think the times have already changed a bunch more than most people in the biz fully realize, and light years from where the general public understands things to be.

It’s a brave new world, indeed…and TEXAS is gearing up to lead the way.

Congress’s inability to embrace change has crippled NASA in the post-shuttle era. NASA should be creating bold new technologies, not building rockets that private enterprise can do for much much less. Support the commercial sector and use the savings to fund real technological and scientific progress at NASA.